World Bulletin / News Desk

At least 50 people were killed by a car-bomb that shook Iraqi capital Baghdad on Monday, according to a local police officer.

The car-bomb exploded in a busy public square in eastern Baghdad’s Shia-majority Sadr City district, Police Officer Ahmed Khalaf said.

Another 42 people, he said, had been injured by the blast.

"The powerful blast occurred when the square was teeming with laborers and passersby," Police First Lieutenant Hatem al-Jabri said earlier.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for Monday’s bombing, but Iraqi officials typically blame such attacks on the ISIL extremist group, which overran vast swathes of territory in northern and western Iraq in 2014.

Last Saturday, at least 27 people were killed -- and dozens more injured -- in a twin bombing claimed by ISIL in the Iraqi capital.

Officials in Baghdad say such seemingly random attacks come as retaliation by the extremist group for an ongoing Iraqi army campaign aimed at recapturing the ISIL-held city of Mosul.